A Story of how Needham High School , Mass., is using yoga and other relaxation techniques to help students fight stress : http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/education/29stress.html It was 6:30 p.m. The lights were still on at Needham High School, here in the affluent Boston suburbs. Paul Richards, the principal, was meeting with the Stress Reduction Committee.On the agenda: finding the right time to bring in experts to train students in relaxation techniques.Dont try to have them teach relaxation in study hall, said Olivia Boyd, a senior. Students, she explained, wont want to interrupt their work. They were already too busy before or after school for the training.No one is busier than Josh Goldman. Captain of varsity tennis, president of the Spanish club and a member of the student council and the Stress Reduction Committee, Josh was not able to squeeze in the meeting at all. Mr. Richards noted his absence wryly. Josh is a perfect example, he said. Hes got a hundred things going on.Here is the high-powered culture that Mr. Richards is trying to change, even if only a little.But cultural change does not come smoothly. When Mr. Richards stopped publishing the honor roll in the local newspaper last winter, a move aimed at some parents who had turned the lists into a public accounting, Rush Limbaugh accused him of politically correct coddling of students, and Jay Leno mocked the school on national television. He received hate mail from all over the country.Mr. Richards is undeterred. Its not that Im trying to turn the culture upside down, he said. Its very important to protect the part of the culture that leads to all the achievement, he said. Its more about bringing the culture to a healthier place.His new stress committee is starting to come up with recommendations, like the relaxation consultants, and is surveying students about unhealthy stress. This term, Mr. Richards is talking up the yoga classes that are required of all seniors. He has asked teachers to schedule homework-free weekends and holidays. The irony, he said, referring to the homework breaks, is that students tell us they appreciate the time because it allows them to catch up on other schoolwork. Mr. Richards is just one principal in the vanguard of a movement to push back against an ethos of super-achievement at affluent suburban high schools amid the extreme competition over college admissions. He has joined like-minded administrators from 44 other high schools and middle schools most in the San Francisco Bay Area but others scattered from Texas to New York to form a group known as S.O.S., for Stressed Out Students. The group was formed four years ago by Denise Pope, a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education and author of the book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001). High schools in other Boston suburbs Wellesley, Lexington, Wayland have taken steps similar to Needhams, organizing stress committees and yoga classes.
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